FANNY AND ALEXANDER
Our collaboration with Mikael Karlsson continous, now together with Canadian librettist Royce Vavrek. Both famous for the opera Melancholia at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm premiered in 2023.
Fanny and Alexander will be a new opera by Mikael and Royce, to be directed by Ivo van Hove, in creative collaboration with Cinematograph.
The performance will include famous Swedish singers Anne Sofie von Otter and Loa Falkman, together with the internationally celebrated singers Thomas Hampson, Sasha Cooke, Peter Tantsits and Doris Soffel.
Conductor will be Ariane Matiakh.
The opera will premiere at La Monnaie / De Munt (Brussels) on December 6, 2024.
Visit the presentation at La Monnaie/De Munt
CRIES AND WHISPERS
An exiting new opera in English adapted from Ingmar Bergman’s film, by composer Mikael Karlsson and librettist Royce Vavrek, developed together with stage director Shuang Zou, and in creative collaboration with Ingmar Bergman jr and Cinematograph.
“I am constantly on the wrong track, as if I wanted to tell a story, but I do not wish to tell stories any longer. What I wish, is to uncover and reveal tensions and secret events ”
From Ingmar Bergman's workbook on Cries and Whispers, 1971.
This project is Supported by Beijing Contemporary Arts Foundation
支持机构：北京当代艺术基金会
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MIKAEL KARLSSON
COMPOSER
A Swedish-born composer who lives and works in New York, Mikael writes music for opera, ballet, modern dance, orchestra and chamber ensembles . His music is performed frequently at festivals, opera houses and concert halls in Europe and the United States . His commissions for dance include works for The Paris Opera (Play - Ekman), The Norwegian Opera and Ballet (Rooms, A Swan Lake, Resin – Ekman; Player – Proietto), Vienna State Opera (Blanc - Proietto), the Royal Swedish Opera and Ballet (Tyll, Midsummer Night’s Dream - Ekman), etc. His first opera, The Echo Drift, premiered at the Prototype Festival in NYC in 2018.
ROYCE VAVREK
LIBRETTIST
Royce Vavrek has “shaken up the timid, backward-looking business of American opera” (The New Yorker). He has been called “an exemplary creator of operatic prose” (The New York Times) and “one of the most celebrated and sought after librettists in the world” (CBC Radio). His opera Angel’s Bone with composer Du Yun was awarded the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Other collaborations include extensive work with Missy Mazzoli, David T. Little, Ricky Ian Gordon, Paola Prestini, Gregory Spears, Ellen Reid, Matt Marks, and Joshua Schmidt.
SHUANG ZOU
STAGE DIRECTOR
Shuang Zou is the Artistic Director of Beijing Music Festival (since 2018), is a UK trained stage director. Her directorial work include Music Theatre Songs of Nature (2021, Klara Festival Brussels); New Opera Orfeo (2018, BMF); Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit(2017, Beijing Comedy Theatre); Music Theatre Die Winterreise (2016, BMF); Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days (2016, China National Theatre); Semi-staged Opera Turandot (2017, Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra) and The Rake’s Progress (2021,Shanghai Symphony Orchestra).